Vintage Shahid Bolsen clip on Egypt

Do you think it is possible for the coup to be removed? Well, if by the coup, you mean Abdul Fatah has Sisi, then, yes, of course, you can have him removed. You can get rid of Sisi. I don't think it would even be terribly difficult to achieve that. You simply have to prevent him from successfully fulfilling his institutional function.

And the institutional function of the state within the imperial system consists basically of delivering the nation's wealth and resources, including human capital, into the hands of multinational corporations and foreign investors, and in neutralizing any potential public popular opposition to that process. So, obviously, if you are able to render Sisi incapable of doing that, reliably doing that, then they will remove him. We all know that the constituency of Sisi is not the Egyptian people. He did not reach power through a legitimately democratic process. So if you prevent him from reliably serving the interests of his real constituency, and his real constituency is foreign investors and multinationals, then they will remove him the same way that shareholders of a corporation have the authority to remove any CEO whose policies and whose management fails to deliver profits and increasing the the values of the shares.

So they will certainly remove him. However, obviously, they will remove him, but they will replace him with someone, who is tasked with the same, role, the same function. So I'm not really sure what the actual point would be to focus on specifically removing CC personally. If you mean by that, what are the prospects for, getting rid of military rule and replacing it with a civilian government, then that's a much more difficult task. That's that's a a far greater challenge because, frankly, as long as the military has such a huge stake in the Egyptian economy, I can't foresee any scenario in which they would accept to to entrust their interests, their economic interests to a civilian to a civilian administration, particularly because Egypt is being integrated into the global economic system and is going down the neoliberal path, which means basically that all state assets are on the auction block and that all, you know, every business sector within the within the country is going to be in competition with and subject to huge multinational corporations.

So, I mean, in this situation, it's inconceivable that the that the military would ever hand over authority over their economic interests to a civil civilian administration that would put their entire financial portfolio in jeopardy. If you can find a way to disentangle the military from the economy to get them to divest from all of their economic interests, then you can have a chance for a civilian government that has some kind of authority. Barring that, I mean, in the absence of that happening, it's really not plausible that the military will ever allow a civilian government to have any real authority over policy. Well, this is where I really think we have to understand something that's very important. All of the emphasis on getting rid of the coup and trying to have you know, emphasizing democratic legitimacy and all of these things is really missing the point.

There is no political independence in Egypt. There is no economic sovereignty in Egypt. This is not the case because of the coup, rather the coup took place because this is the case. It was the case before the coup happened, and it will be the case after the coup is removed from power if that happens. It will continue to be the case.

I mean, just compare the economic plans and priorities of the Mussi government with the plans, the economic policies of the coup, there's very little difference. The character of the two administrations are radically different, no question about it, but the actual plans and policies are almost identical. In fact, the the the policies of the Morsi administration, the policies of the coup are also almost identical to the policies of the time of Mubarak. There's been very little change. President Muhammad Morsi sought loans from the IMF.

Morsi's government sought to cut the subsidies for fuel and food food and fuel subsidies just like Sisi and replace the food subsidies with a smart card system just like Sisi. Mursi's administration took measures to institute a VAT tax instead of a sales tax just like Sisi. Even the Suez Canal project, the big project of of the Fataha Sisi, even he has publicly acknowledged that that was actually a project from the previous administration, the privatization of the Suez Canal. So two revolutions, four governments later, there's a remarkable degree of continuity in the policies and the priorities of the government from the time of Mubarak to the time of Scaf to the time of Morsi to the time now of Sisi. The policies haven't changed in any significant or meaningful way.

These programs, the cutting of subsidies and the increasing the number of people in the tax taxation system and the austerity programs, Morsi's government wanted to take more time to implement these things in order to prepare the population for the changes. The overthrow of Mursi created enough of a crisis situation in Egypt that it allowed the the military regime to force these measures through in a state of chaos and state of emergency in the country when this when the country was in a state of shock. They were able to push all of these measures through without there being opposition. Now, I mean, there are people who say that Sisi has stolen the economic plan of the Muslim Brotherhood or stolen the plan of the Mursi government, and he's taking these policies as as if they are his own. And some people complain that there were protests against Mursi because of the plans and the and the policies that he was implementing, particularly these these austerity measures that he was protested against.

And when Sisi is implementing the same plans and policies, there's no protest. Well, the question actually answers itself, and it also lets you know why Sisi is where he is. Sisi created a situation and has the authority and has the ruthlessness to implement these policies by force without waiting and with the necessary repression of the population. Mohammed Morsi was either unwilling or unable, probably both, to sufficiently suppress the population. There was more freedom under Morsi to protest.

And one of the reasons, of course, that there was more freedom to protest was because he didn't control the military. And the military is not going to support him to to implement these policies. And you need the support of the military to implement these policies because these policies are obviously against the public interest and they will lead to unrest and they will lead to popular opposition. So if you want to implement these kind of policies, you must have the support of the military because the military is going to be called in necessarily to suppress the population. But the point here is not to criticize the administration of Mohammed Morsi, and certainly is not to praise the administration of Sisi.

The point is simply to say, I mean, these policies are not the policies of Morsi, and these policies are not policies of Sisi, these are the policies of the IMF, these are the policies of multinational corporations and foreign investors and the global corporate imperial elite. The Muslim Brotherhood didn't come up with these policies, these policies were dictated to them. Sisi didn't come up with policies. The policies are dictated to him, and these policies will be dictated to anyone who comes after Sisi. Within this context, any talk about democratic legitimacy is either ignorant or deluded or it is a deliberate deception.

Whether you have a civilian government or you have a military government, either one will be subordinate to the global economic system, to the global corporate economic imperial system. And this is your real fundamental problem. And this is not a problem that can be solved in a single spontaneous sudden dramatic event. This is not a problem that can go away simply by overthrowing a regime. Real system change is a long term process.

And every day that we spend hoping for a quick solution, day that we spend hoping that maybe the problem can be solved quickly in some dramatic action, we're losing ground and we are delaying actually doing the real work that has to be done in order to achieve the change that we need.